An excellent piece by Damian Thompson appears today in which he reports on article that is not online by Joseph Cullen, the director of the London Symphony Chorus. He quotes Cullen: “There is a glaring lack of sympathy for the heritage which should be the bedrock of worthy sacred music in today’s Church and it is hard to discern any attention to the 1967 instruction Musicam Sacram, the Instruction on Music in the Liturgy.”
Cullen draws attention to a relationship between music committees and publishers who extract copyright fees – a relationship that would be regarded as corrupt in any other field.
Cullen has been misquoted in the final paragraph. What he says is "The elected church music committees of the bishops' conferences cannot have vested interested in promoting their own music, or type of music. This would be regarded as corrupt in any other field".
Damian Thompson has interpreted this as a criticism of composer-publishers who "make large sums of money out of the performance of their own heavily copyrighted music in parishes".
Mr Thompson is incorrect on two counts:
1) Music cannot be "heavily" copyrighted. It is either the composer's copyright or not.
2) Performance of music in divine worship does not fall under the PRS licence and, therefore, no money changes hands.
I know of several kitchen-table publishers in the UK – I doubt any of them even breaks even!
Did you know that Joe Cullen used to be the Assistant Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral from 1994-'97? I knew him well then, and am not suprised he's starting to find his voice now that the church is starting to listen (or parts of it at least).
<>
Just FYI, this statement is not correct. You misunderstood the statement. Please do some research, and then come back and contribute.
Do you mean Joseph Cullen was not Assistant MM at Westminster?